> On Aug 29, 2005, at 9:17 PM, Brad Penoff wrote:
>
>
>>> PML: Pretty much the same as it was described in the paper. Its
>>> interface is basically MPI semantics (i.e., it sits right under
>>> MPI_SEND and the rest).
>>>
>>> BTL: Byte Transfer Layer; it's the next generation of PTL. The
>>> BTL is
>>> much more simple than the PTL, and removes all vestigaes of any MPI
>>> semantics that still lived in the PTL. It's a very simple byte
>>> mover
>>> layer, intended to make it quite easy to implement new network
>>> interfaces.
>>>
>>
>> I was curious about what you meant by the removal of MPI
>> semantics. Do
>> you mean it simply has no notion of tags, ranks, etc? In other
>> words,
>> does it simply put the data into some sort of format so that the
>> PML can
>> operate on with its own state machine?
>>
>
> I don't recall the details (it's been quite a while since I looked at
> the PTL), but there was some semblance of MPI semantics that creeped
> down into the PTL interface itself. The BTL has none of that -- it's
> purely a byte mover.
>

The old ptl's controlled the short vs long rendezvous protocol, the
eager transmission of data, as well as pipelining of rdma operations
(where appropriate). In the pml OB1 and the btls this has all been
moved the OB1 level. Note that this is simply a logical separation of
control and comes at virtually no cost (well there is the very small
cost of using a function pointer).

>
>> Also, say you had some underlying protocol that allowed unordered
>> delivery
>> of data (so not fully ordered like TCP); which "layer" would the
>> notion of
>> "order" be handled in? I'm guessing PML would need some sort of
>> sequence
>> number attached to it; is that right?
>>
>
> Correct. That was in the PML in the 2nd gen stuff and is still at
> the PML in the 3rd gen stuff.
>
>
>>> BML: BTL Management Layer; this used to be part of the PML but we
>>> recently split it off into its own framework. It's mainly the
>>> utility
>>> gorp of managing multiple BTL modules in a single process. This was
>>> done because when working with the next generation of collectives,
>>> MPI-2 IO, and MPI-2 one sided operations, we want to have the
>>> ability
>>> to use the PML (which the collectives do today, for example) or
>>> to be
>>> able to dive right down and directly use the BTLs (i.e., cut out a
>>> little latency).
>>>
>>
>> In the cases where the BML is required, does it cost extra memcpy's?
>>
>
> Not to my knowledge. Galen -- can you fill in the details of this
> question and the rest of Brad's questions?
>
The BML layer is simply a management layer for discovering peer
resources. It does mask the btl send, put, prepare_src, prepare_dst
operations but this code is all inlined and very short so gcc should
inline this appropriately. In fact this inlined code used to be in
the PML OB1 before we added the BML so it is a no cost "logical"
abstraction. We don't add any extra memory copies in this abstraction.